The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of avocado tree, botanically known as Persea americana P. Mill. of the Lauraceae family, and hereinafter referred to by the variety denomination ‘MIRIAM’.
Clonal avocado rootstocks were developed in Israel on a small scale between the years 1962 to 1977 and on a large scale in the years following. During the entire period about 220 different rootstocks have been developed in an attempt to solve soil problems caused by stress factors such as salinity, lime, poor aeration and root-rot, and various combinations of these factors, while simultaneously improving productivity. Uniformity among trees and dwarfness were also taken into account as part of the search for better rootstocks. The development process included field evaluation on a very large scale, in which 350 experiments and 65000 trees took part.
The new Persea americana P. Mill. ‘MIRIAM’ was discovered and selected by the inventors, Avraham Ben Ya'akov, Miriam Silberstein, and Vered Irihimovitch, growing in a cultivated area in the late 1970's in Givat Haim, Israel. The new Persea americana P. Mill. ‘MIRIAM’ was selected by the inventors based on Phytophthora cinnamomi, drought, Alkaline soils and salinity resistance.
Asexual propagation of the new Persea americana P. Mill. variety by the Frolich method for vegetative propagation was first performed in March 1985 in The Volcani Center, Israel, and has demonstrated that the combination of characteristics as herein disclosed for the new variety are firmly fixed and retained through successive generations of asexual propagation. The new variety propagates true-to-type.